Under big trees

Patrice Deparpe

Under big trees
Patrice Deparpe

“I showed you the drawings I’ve been doing to learn how to do trees, didn’t I? It’s as though I’d never seen or drawn any before. I can see one from my window. I have to patiently work out how to create the mass of the tree, then the tree itself and the trunk, branches and leaves. I start with the branches that are arranged symmetrically in a single plane, then those that bend in front of the trunk… Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not copying the tree I see through my window. I’m trying to record all the different ways in which it affects me. It’s not about drawing the tree that I see: it’s an object in front of me that does something to my mind, not just as a tree but also in relation to all kinds of other feelings… I would not be expressing my emotions if I did an exact copy of it, or drew the leaves one by one, the way people do these days… But after I’ve identified with it, I want to create an object that resembles it: the sign of the tree that exists in my mind, not in other artists’ minds… For example, some painters learned to do leaves by drawing 33, 33, 33, as though counting for a doctor who’s listening to your chest… These are simply the leftovers from other people’s ways of expressing things… Others have invented signs of their own… Using theirs would be like using something that’s dead: it’s about what emotions they felt at the time, and other people’s emotional hand-me-downs have nothing to do with what I originally felt. Claude Lorrain and Poussin have their own ways of drawing the leaves of a tree, they’ve invented their own forms of expression. They do it so skilfully, it’s almost as though they did the leaves one at a time. To put it simply, they actually use maybe fifty leaves to represent two thousand, but the way they place their leaf signs makes us see two thousand in our minds… They had their own personal language, which has now become a learned language, I have to find signs that reflect the quality of what I’ve invented, new visual signs which in turn will become part of the common language if what I say about them is important to other people. An artist’s importance can be measured by the quantity of new signs that they introduce to the visual language.”1 These are the words of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) about his drawings of trees, cited by Louis Aragon, they are the perfect introduction to the works by Vincent Barré in the “Sous les grands arbres” exhibition at the Musée Départemental Matisse of Le Cateau-Cambrésis.

Matisse shows how he has moved away from “simply” copying reality. By listening to and transcribing his emotions, he has created a uniquely distinctive body of work and escaped the looming shadow of the “great masters”.

Under big trees

Patrice Deparpe

Under big trees
Patrice Deparpe

“I showed you the drawings I’ve been doing to learn how to do trees, didn’t I? It’s as though I’d never seen or drawn any before. I can see one from my window. I have to patiently work out how to create the mass of the tree, then the tree itself and the trunk, branches and leaves. I start with the branches that are arranged symmetrically in a single plane, then those that bend in front of the trunk… Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not copying the tree I see through my window. I’m trying to record all the different ways in which it affects me. It’s not about drawing the tree that I see: it’s an object in front of me that does something to my mind, not just as a tree but also in relation to all kinds of other feelings… I would not be expressing my emotions if I did an exact copy of it, or drew the leaves one by one, the way people do these days… But after I’ve identified with it, I want to create an object that resembles it: the sign of the tree that exists in my mind, not in other artists’ minds… For example, some painters learned to do leaves by drawing 33, 33, 33, as though counting for a doctor who’s listening to your chest… These are simply the leftovers from other people’s ways of expressing things… Others have invented signs of their own… Using theirs would be like using something that’s dead: it’s about what emotions they felt at the time, and other people’s emotional hand-me-downs have nothing to do with what I originally felt. Claude Lorrain and Poussin have their own ways of drawing the leaves of a tree, they’ve invented their own forms of expression. They do it so skilfully, it’s almost as though they did the leaves one at a time. To put it simply, they actually use maybe fifty leaves to represent two thousand, but the way they place their leaf signs makes us see two thousand in our minds… They had their own personal language, which has now become a learned language, I have to find signs that reflect the quality of what I’ve invented, new visual signs which in turn will become part of the common language if what I say about them is important to other people. An artist’s importance can be measured by the quantity of new signs that they introduce to the visual language.”1 These are the words of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) about his drawings of trees, cited by Louis Aragon, they are the perfect introduction to the works by Vincent Barré in the “Sous les grands arbres” exhibition at the Musée Départemental Matisse of Le Cateau-Cambrésis.

Matisse shows how he has moved away from “simply” copying reality. By listening to and transcribing his emotions, he has created a uniquely distinctive body of work and escaped the looming shadow of the “great masters”.